Work About Off the Clock Tapped In ↗Weekly culture intel from the inside: gaming, sports, music, fashion, creators and whatever’s moving between them, for anyone who needs to stay tapped in.

OFF THE CLOCK

About covers how I got here. This is everything else, the stuff I’d probably talk your ear off about over coffee. A lot of it bleeds into my work, since some of my favorite things brands do are when they mash different interests together, and most people are into more than one thing.

BASKETBALL

Growing up on sports

Nick as a young boy wearing a Kobe Bryant Lakers jersey. — Me as a kid in my Kobe jersey

Nick as a young boy in his AYSO soccer uniform. — Me in my AYSO uniform

Sports were a big part of growing up for me, both playing and watching. I played basketball first, and I also played soccer through AYSO for a while. In a way I wish my parents had pushed me to take sports more seriously as a whole, but I enjoyed it either way (one of my AYSO teammates went on to play for the LA Galaxy youth club, so I was around some pretty talented kids). I still watch soccer, or football as I call it, mainly the World Cup and international matches, and I try to keep up with club matches where I can, which is the hardest part since MLS isn’t exactly the most competitive league in the world.

Basketball was the bigger one though. I was born and raised in Los Angeles and grew up watching Kobe and the Lakers with my family whenever the games were on, and the Kobe and Shaq three-peat is really where it started for me. I kept watching as Kobe won two more with Pau, and I’ve been a Lakers fan ever since. I played a lot of basketball growing up too, travel club and AAU, and later I coached for the same club that helped develop me, through high school and a bit after.

Going to Lakers games was a different story, since tickets weren’t something my family could afford. My first game was actually a friend’s birthday party back in middle school, in a private box with a bunch of classmates and their parents.

PHOTOGRAPHY

A couple things I picked up early

Griffith Observatory lit up at night above Los Angeles. — Griffith Observatory at night

My great-grandfather (my mom’s grandfather) taught me how to play chess as a kid. He lived in a senior community in Santa Monica, basically across the street from the beach, where a lot of the residents played at the park tables with the chessboards built in, and I have a lot of memories of playing him and some of his neighbors out there with the wind blowing, seagulls calling, and the waves crashing. Today I mostly play rapid games online and I’ve managed to get to 2000+, so if you play too, I’m always down for a game.

Photography started with my uncle’s old Nikon, which he was about to toss. I taught myself on it before buying my own camera in high school, and in college I started shooting a lot more. I still shoot both digital and film, mostly because I’d rather have the photos than let the memories fade.

STREETWEAR

FRAGRANCE

Finding my own style

Nick as a baby beside a row of sneakers he laid out himself. — My first sneaker collection, which I laid out myself. My mom thought it was hilarious.

A shelf of collectibles including three Formula 1 mini helmets, driver figures and Be@rbrick toys. — Some of what’s on my shelf

Growing up I was on the heavier side and pretty self-conscious about it, so I mostly wore basketball shorts and baggy t-shirts and didn’t really have a sense of style. In high school and college I started exploring fashion as a way to feel more comfortable in my own skin. I got into streetwear through brands like Supreme around 2014 and KITH around 2017, plus sneakers and whatever else was trending, and most of what I learned about fashion came from being in those communities and keeping up with the drops. I’m still figuring out my own style today.

Streetwear is also how I got into art. Seeing the collabs and going to museums made me pay more attention to different artists and styles, and KAWS and Takashi Murakami are two of my favorites, both for how they put their pieces together and the stories behind them. My shelf is kind of a small piece of everything I’m into, with KAWS figures, Be@rbricks, the Murakami x Cactus Jack collab, and my F1 helmets all next to each other (among other things).

Fragrance is more recent, the last two or three years. I went down the rabbit hole of niche fragrance on TikTok and YouTube and then started testing things in person at stores. Xerjoff is the brand I’ve been most obsessed with lately, but I don’t really have one I always reach for, and I rotate depending on my mood and the weather. The one that means the most to me is Blue Talisman by Ex Nihilo, since it’s what I wore at my wedding.

PORSCHE

Always into cars

A 1995 McLaren MP4-10 Formula 1 car on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum, shot on film. — McLaren MP4-10 at the Petersen, shot on film

A vintage Porsche 911 parked on a street in Paris. — Somewhere in Paris, 2023

I’ve always loved cars. As a kid I’d point out every Ferrari and Lamborghini I saw, and I had a bunch of toy cars and RC cars.

My interest in motorsport and Formula 1 came much later, during the pandemic, mostly through Lewis Hamilton. I have a lot of respect for him as a person, somebody who’s bigger than the sport and a cultural icon, and who carved his own path when people kept trying to tell him what to do and how to do it. F1 is different from basketball for me, since it’s less about picking one team and more about the sport and the drivers. I’ve followed Lewis from Mercedes to Ferrari, I was a big Daniel Ricciardo fan during his McLaren days, and I have a ton of respect for greats like Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher.

On my shelf I have a mini helmet from Lewis’s 2021 São Paulo weekend, one of the most inspiring drives I’ve seen. He was disqualified from qualifying, started the sprint from the back, and still ended up winning on Sunday even with an engine penalty. Next to it is Senna’s (the driver Lewis looked up to growing up) and Lando Norris’s, which I bought when he got his first win. I haven’t been to a race yet, but it’s near the top of my bucket list. The closest thing so far was the Vault tour at the Petersen Automotive Museum, which my wife surprised me with, and I brought my T2 and shot the old F1 cars on film.

For road cars, I love air-cooled 911s like the 930, 964, and 993. A flat-six, a manual, and that vintage look is just that old-school cool to me, and they’ve gotten so expensive that I’d take any of them at this point. On a summer trip to Europe in 2023, the one photo I definitely wanted to snap was a vintage 911 on a city street, shot on my Contax T2. I found it on a random side street in Paris as we were walking and exploring the city.

COUNTER-STRIKE

ONLINE

SOCIAL

Chronically online

Nick’s desk gaming and streaming setup in 2019. — My setup back in 2019 (when it was clean)

Social media wasn’t really a thing when I was a kid, at least not like it is now. I grew up as a lot of these platforms were starting up and breaking out (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitch back when it was Justin.tv, and later TikTok), and I was on pretty much all of them early.

My Counter-Strike days started on a MacBook Pro around 2013. I was watching a lot of SeaNanners’ Trouble in Terrorist Town videos, which got me into Garry’s Mod and then Counter-Strike: Source, and I’d play against bots offline wherever I took my laptop. From there I started watching pro CS and got a lot more competitive with FPS games in general. I played online GameBattles tournaments in Call of Duty games like Black Ops 2 and Infinite Warfare, and I never went pro, but over the years I’ve hit Supreme Master First Class in CS:GO, Immortal 3 in VALORANT, and a 25,000+ Premier rating in CS2. I’ve also streamed on and off since 2012, mostly to hang out with friends and share some laughs. I don’t play or stream nearly as much these days (the setup in the photo is from an old apartment back in 2019, when it was still clean).

I definitely still consume a ton of content though. I usually have a stream or a video on in the background while I work, and I’m as guilty of doomscrolling as anyone. I’ve always paid attention to who’s on the come up, which is kind of how I ended up in talent management, working with a lot of the creators I’d been watching for years. Being this chronically online is probably a big part of why my job makes sense to me.

COFFEE

CYCLING

TV & FILM

Slower weekends

A homemade layered coffee drink topped with cream, recreated from Handles Coffee. — Recreating a drink from Handles Coffee

I got into coffee during COVID when the coffee shops closed. I started with pour-overs, got pretty hyper-fixated, bought an espresso machine, and I’m still experimenting with different beans and drinks. On weekends my wife and I like to find a new coffee shop, sit outside, and read, and I always try whatever drink the shop is known for (so if you have a favorite spot, send it my way). The photo is me trying to recreate a drink from Handles Coffee, formerly Camel, one of my favorite spots in LA.

One day I’d love to open my own coffee shop, one that leans into my Armenian heritage and celebrates the diaspora, and is also a third space where other diasporas feel welcome. A big inspiration for that is Yala Coffee here in LA. It has Iraqi-Armenian roots and their Armenian coffee is so nostalgic for me, and it’s a big part of why I started thinking about what my own shop could look like.

Cycling is pretty new for me. I bought my bike in the summer of 2026, but bikes have kind of always been around. One of my dad’s closest longtime friends has owned a bike shop in Pasadena for about 35 years (my dad helped run it in the early days), and our families are so close that my older cousins grew up best friends with their kids. After all those years around the shop and the riders who came through, it felt like it was time for me to start riding too, and it’s a lot easier on my body than running.

I also really love film and TV. I’ve always appreciated filmmaking and storytelling, both in movies and in multi-season TV series. My wife and I go to screenings and opening weekends pretty often for movies we’re excited about, and these days we binge a lot of shows together too. Mad Men ties in really well with my interest in advertising, but I’d put it up there with the best shows ever made, and while it’s framed around the men at the agency, the women are the ones who really carry it. Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Succession, Game of Thrones, and Arrested Development are just some of the others I love, and there are a lot more.

WATCHES

Something to pass down

I’ve always been into watches and the craftsmanship that goes into them. At the end of 2023 I treated myself to my first nice one, a 2003 Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date, as a reward for a really good stretch at work. I liked that it was vintage and wasn’t overpriced. Nobody in my family really had watches like this growing up, so it’s a first for us, and I’m hoping it’s something I can pass down one day.

If we overlap anywhere

I love getting to share this stuff with people who are into it too, and some of my favorite conversations have started that way. So if we overlap anywhere here, reach out.